1. Field of the Invention
Aspects of the invention relate to a method and apparatus to display images, and more particularly, to an N-up display method and apparatus to display a plurality of images on a screen, and an image forming apparatus that performs the N-up display method.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, an image forming apparatus converts document images into coded data and outputs the coded data on a sheet, etc., into a format interpretable by the user, wherein the document is written out by a user through an application program and requested to be printed by the user. In detail, data which is written by a user through an application program installed in a personal computer (PC) and is requested to be printed, is temporally stored in a printer spooler and is then transmitted to an image forming apparatus connected to the PC through a Universal Serial Bus (USB) or a wireless network, such as Bluetooth.
Photo printers which are directly connected to digital cameras or memory cards storing image data, etc. and which print the image data have been developed. Due to the development of portable photo printers, it is possible to capture and print desired images typically without limitations of time and location. In order to allow a user to select images to be printed among images stored in a memory card when a photo printer receives image data from the memory card, the photo printer includes a display device, such as a Liquid Crystal Display (LCD), to display the images stored in the memory card. Also, in order to allow the user to simultaneously check a plurality of images stored in the memory card, the display device included in the photo printer typically has an N-up display function to display a plurality of images on a screen.
FIG. 1 is a view for explaining a conventional method of displaying a plurality of images on a screen, wherein the images are respectively displayed on frames having the same predetermined size, obtained by dividing a single screen into a plurality of regions. According to the conventional N-up display method as described above, since all images are displayed using frames having a predetermined shape regardless of the shapes of the images, it can be inefficient in that many blank spaces between the images typically appear when images having shapes different from the predetermined frame shape are displayed. Thus the number of the displayed images is smaller than the number of images which can be maximally displayed on a screen.